As the 30th anniversary of Bill Evans’ death approaches, he is on many minds. I am
preparing a piece that will run the week of the date he died, September 15. As I researched it, among the Evans posts I found buried in the Rifftides past is one from four years ago. In those primitive days, the staff had yet to learn how to embed video. All we could do was provide a link to a rare performance of Evans and Kenny Burrell in duo. Now, we bring it to you direct as part of this encore post.
Evans And Burrell
(October 19, 2006)
As far as I knew until today, Bill Evans and guitarist Kenny Burrell recorded together only once, on Evans’ 1978 Quintessence session, which also included tenor saxophonist Harold Land, bassist Ray Brown and drummer Philly Joe Jones. The resourceful Jan Stevens of The Bill Evans Web Pages has pointed the way to another collaboration between Evans and Burrell, at the 1978 Montreux Jazz Festival. They played Thad Jones’ “A Child is Born,” one of the tunes from Quintessence. Evans was rarely caught smiling on camera, but he smiled radiantly—and for good reason—as he and Burrell finished a notably sensitive performance.